spc wrote:IRS story, Man goes to church & tells the pastor he is a coin collector. He ask the pastor if he could buy the coin from the collection basket & he would pay with a check. He then used the payments as a charitable deduction.

That brings to mind a true problem we had in Boston during my IRS days. There are a couple of dog/horse tracks in the Boston area & every so often we would get a case on a "10 percenter." A 10 percenter is a guy (usually a homeless man or any drunk) who hangs around the winning ticket window & offers to cash the winning ticket in, using his Social Security number, for 10% of the winnings. (Race tracks are required to report pay-outs, over a certain amount, to the IRS) That way the real winner gets to keep 90% of his winnings...Tax free! (the 10%er could care less because if we (IRS) ever catch up with him....what are we gonna do?? (even the IRS can't get blood from a stone!)The perfect crime!

If the 10%er told the 90%er to go take walk, what's the 90% guy going to do? He no longer has possession of the ticket and really has no way of proving its his, secondly if he does attempt to get it back through legal means he's admitting to Tax evasion.

Richard S. wrote:If the 10%er told the 90%er to go take walk, what's the 90% guy going to do? He no longer has possession of the ticket and really has no way of proving its his, secondly if he does attempt to get it back through legal means he's admitting to Tax evasion.

I think physical violence would be the answer! (Most drunks are not too intimidating)Seriously Richard, I've never heard of a 10percenter trying to screw the real winner ........who i usualy big enough & shady enough that the 10percenter is more than happy to take his 10% & leave with all his limbs intact.(Of course the IRS never knows who the real winner was but most of these guys are connected, if you know what I mean. They know where to find a 10 percenter & how to get even with him if he is stupid enough to try anything.)

I own a S&W 9MM handgun & a Remingtlon 12 guage, pump action shotgun. I learned to fire rifles when I was a kid with a 22 cal rifle, shooting at targets while laying prone on an old, dirty mattressI had never fired a handgun until I went through the DEA Basic Agent course in the spring of 1974. At that time, the Justice Dept trained agents on & issued 38cal Police Special revolvers. Our firearms instructor was an incredible shot who had been a State Dept. Special Agent whose duty was to protect ambassadors, etc.We were trained to fire the Combat Course, which consisted of left & right hand barricade firing positions, point-shoulder position & a bunch of other positions, but the main thing they wanted us to learn was to draw our weapons quickly & fire accurately from the waist as FBI statistics proved that most law enforcement involved shootings took place very quickly & at very close range.While accuracy was obviously very important, judgement (as to when to shoot & when not too) is & is the most important thing for anyone with a firearm to master. To that end, the Justice Dept trains all its agents to keep their finger out of the trigger housing until they have made the decision to use deadly force......Keeping your finger off the trigger gives you that extra split-second to decide if you need to shoot, & prevents accidental discharges.Part of our training (& I believe Justice still uses it) was in "Hogan's Alley." Hogan's Alley is now a very realistic, "Anytown USA" storefront community at Quantico VA (Now home to FBI & DEA academies) where agent trainees are put through very realistic shoot/Don't shoot scenarios.When I went through training, we had no such fun sites! Our training was done in an old converted bank building in NW Washington with a gym (for PT) in the basement & firing ranges on the 2nd & 3rd floors. Our "Hogan's Alley" consisted of the following:On the day we went through Hogan's Alley training, all of us trainees assembled in the basement gym, with unloaded weapons but wearing our blue coveralls that we always wore for firearms training to keep our clothes clean.The instructors waited upstairs at the 2nd floor range. When they yelled your name (down the stairs) each trainee had to sling two 20lb weight bellts over their shoulders, do 20 quick push-ups & then start to run up the stairs where you had been instructeded to stop at the 2nd floor firing range. As you were bolting up the stairs, the instructors were yelling & throwing ash can covers & things down at you! As you made the 2nd floor landing, (while still being yelled at, etc) most of the instructors were pointing up the stairs & yelling for you to keep going. (we had been instructed to go to the 2nd floor range so I stopped & refused to run up to the 3rd floor...,.Thats was correct in that they just wanted to see if you would get flustered & not follow your instructions to stop at the 2nd floor range. Trust me, we had a number of trainees that did keep runing up to the 3rd floor) As each trainee finished the exercise, he would join the instructors on the stairs in yelling & razzing the next trainee! (what a blast!) I'll never forget one trainee...from Hawaii I think.....who was running up the stairs & had a wild, crazed look in his eyes as he approached the 2nd floor landing. Just to be a wise guy I pointed to an open window & yelled for him to jump!! He scared the hell out of a bunch of us by trying to do just that!! (we had to grab him & steer him away from the window!)It's hard to put yourself in the mindset of that exercise but it was very stressful! (Your livelyhood depended on your passing the course & we lost almost 1/2 of the trainees that started the course through being washed out)(side note: DEA had a deliberatly dramatic way of washing a trainee out of the course.....We all had name plates & our books etc on our desks in the classroom. When you all took your lunchbreak & returned to class.....one desk would be vacant...No nameplate, no books...just gone! You couldn't ask any questions & when we got back to our hotel (they had us all stay at the Ramada Inn, NW Washington where we all had a roomate) the trainee's stuff was just gone a(s if he had never existed) & his roomate now had a private room!Sorry this is dragging but I'm having fun reminiscing.Anyway, back to Hogan's Alley:When you entered the 2nd floor firing range, the lead instructor handed you twelve 38cal rounds (six to load in the pistol & six for your pocket) as you were loading your weapon he explained what the "problem" was in the actual firing range (through a door) He said there are 3 hostages being held by an unknow number of bad guys. Your job was to kill he bad guys & free the hostages. When you enterd the actual range, you were in complete darkness. The light had been turned off & you had to feel your way to firing station 1. The lead insrtuctor's voice yelled out: "Are you ready?" When you yelled yes... suddenly the lights were thrown on & all hell broke loose! Instructors were screaming...:"shoot:"....Don't shoot" & swearing & throwing ash can covers at you! You noticed that the gate had been removed on firing point 1 allowing full access (for the first time) to the whole area downrange. There were paper (human shaped & painted) targets scattered about & mmediatley to your left was a bad guy with a shotgun so you spun around & shot him. (later you found out that there was a mother, holding a baby target a few feet behind the bad guy target so that your rounds went through the bad guy but then killed the mother & baby!)There were a few other bad guys targets closeby that you killed pretty easily & then, after you had fired six rounds (& your revolver was empty) the lights snapped off again. I had seen a bad guy target on the far right, downrange, so I made use of the darkness to scramble to the right while I was reloading in the dark. When the lights snapped back on (probably about 15 seconds) I immediatley snapped off 2 rounds into the bad guy target . Suddenly a target started moving (on rails overhead) & as it got closer I could see it had a gun in its right hand aimed right at me! I snapped of 2 more rounds into him & as the target got closer I could see that in it's left hand (near its waist) it was holding a small but unmistakable DEA badge!! I had just killed a DEA agent!!Those of us trainees that had killed our fellow "agent" (& that was almost everyone in the class) had to spend the afternoon writing letters to DEA headquarters, explaing the shooting & writing letters to the wife & kids of the "agent" we had killed.The intention of Hogan's Alley was/is not to turn basic agents into a group of proffesional , hostage saving commandos but rather to give you a realistic experience & realization as to what your unproffesional actions could result in. Most of us, in a few short moments, had managed to kill an innocent young mother, her baby & gunned down a fellow DEA agent!It was a hard lesson but one that I'll never forget!

The moral we all learned that day, & one I think anyone owning a weapon needs to learn is....Keep your finger out of the trigger housing until you are sure & always be aware of your surroundings. (are you reading this Dick Cheney?....sorry, couldn't help myself)

ken wrote:i respect your service to the country. but drugs is a war that has been lost from the start and were still losing and always will.

Believe it or not...I agree. I personaly, think all drugs should be legalalized & taxed, but as long as they remain illegal, we are a useful tool. DEA does not go after users or street level traffickers, that is left to local cops to do. We go after organized criminal groups, typicaly international, who just happen to be selling drugs usually amongst other crimes. (typicaly guns, trafficking in organized white slavery & border crossing, terrorism, political bribery, money laundering, murder for hire, loan sharking, extortion & a host of other serious crimes) Selling drugs is usually just a very lucrative & easy way to make fast money & help finance their other "interests."The ability to infiltrate these gangs, through undercover drug "buys", provides an excellent vehicle to inroduce federal law enforcement into groups that would otherwise be inaccessable & thus provdes a great deal of intelligence infomation that would otherwise go unknown.This infomation is typicaly used to succesfuly prosecute bad guys in federal court & used to prevent other crimes by sharing with other federal law enforcement agencies & working cooperatively in joint investigations. Often one of our agents is the only cop on the inside with the trust of the bad guys to get this info. (there/'s always been a huge rivalry between the FBI & DEA. DEA Agents feel that the "button down collared" FBI agents are no match for us when it comes to working undercover..... Hell, there's a huge dislike of the FBI shared by all law enfrocement agencies that they (FBI) look down their noses at!)

Here's a link to the FBI's Hogans Alley of today. (DEA agents use it too) Looks like alot of fun~!(Oh man.....They even have a private company that provides role player actors to confront new agents!! A little more realistic than our paper targets on rails that I mentioned in my story above......... What fun!!!)

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/jan05/hogan013105.htmThis link is broken, either the page no longer exists or there is some other issue like a typo.

http://www.fbi.gov/hq/td/academy/pau/pau.htmThis link is broken, either the page no longer exists or there is some other issue like a typo.

Compare the crappy old FBI badge (seen at the above site) to the nice DEA badge!!

Please don't take my words as trying to denigrate the fine work that the FBI does. (They do a great job of recovering stolen cars (their real "Bread & Butter" for most of the Hoover years) & enforcing the federal Migratory Bird Act! )

Last edited by Devil505 on Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:57 am, edited 2 times in total.

it's no secret that the "war in drugs" can be won, but imagine all the problems it would cause. Millions would be out of work, cops and dealers both. The US government knows where 80% or more of the dope comes from, but do they spray roundup on the plants? nope. Why booze is legal and encouraged but pot is a crime is just stupid. How many people die by getting hit by a pot-influenced driver?

Sorry but I strongly disagree with that. Simply put as long as there is demand there will be people willing to take the risks of cultivating, smuggling and finally selling them. The risks are high but the profits are enormous EVEN on local scale. If you libve in the Wyoming Valley, you can make the 2.5 hour drive to Philly, buy $200 worth of Heroin. Drive back here and sell it for $1000+...

e.alleg wrote:it's no secret that the "war in drugs" can be won, but imagine all the problems it would cause. Millions would be out of work, cops and dealers both. The US government knows where 80% or more of the dope comes from, but do they spray roundup on the plants? nope. Why booze is legal and encouraged but pot is a crime is just stupid. How many people die by getting hit by a pot-influenced driver?

I agree with Richard in that I don't think you could ever really stop drug trafficking just as you cant stop prostitution, gambling, pornography or any type of "morals" crimes. There is any old maxim in political science that says "You cant legislate morality." Look at how successful this country was with prohibition!As far as your solution of spraying crops, etc that will never work. Poppy plants are grown well are in sections of the world not under US control & grown by farmers as their main livlihood. It would be like trying to get our farmers to stop growing wheat & corn. Then, what about all the other abused drugs, Amphetamines, etc...They will just become more popular. As far as "pot" is concerned, it is a weed that grows naturaly by the side of the road in many parts of the world & can very succesfully be grown in a basement under grow lamps anywhere in the world! The best we could ever do is lower the quality available on the street but then that will only drive up price & demand and encourage more crime. The only real way to end these crimes is to legalize them. (I'm obviously speaking just as a private citzen here & DEA takes a much different view ) Alcohol is the perfect example: While some people will always abuse it, once it became legal again it took the incentive out for organized crime to bootleg it, provides tax money to the gorvenment & allows for much better control of quality, safety of the products, etc.

Last edited by Devil505 on Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Spraying someone elses crops with poison? That sounds like Agent Orange (dioxin, one of mans most deadly compounds) all over again. I can see the Peruvian, Bolivian, Columbian and Afgan kiddies with birth defects cleaning out whats left in the US Treasury in Federal Courts for the birth defects and deaths since its not really a war but an anti-crime operation. At least in a declared war you can remove some liability.

As said before its just like prohibition, all that did was turn a majority of Americans into criminals, I don't think too many gave up drinking alcohol. If drugs were legal and purchased at the pharmacy, you would collect taxes, know who, and have a record of who does and does not have a problem. The taxes would pay for treatment and rehabilitation etc. Most of the burglaries, muggings etc. disappear overnight. How many murders occurr in this country every year because of ILLEGAL drugs? The quality and saftey issues would be gone for the user too, how many people die because they really didn't know how good there latest bag was? The consumer would get a quality product at a price he could afford without having to steal or commit some other crimes. The crimminalization is the only reason the stuff costs so much in the first place, hence the crimminal activity to pay the price.

Heroin, cocaine and a lot of other crap like that was available at the turn of the century over the counter and there were very few addicts. Seems like half of the high is becuase its illegal.

It isn't really a war as I see it, more like an exercise in futility and a terrible waste of money and manpower. Paying to keep someone in prison for ten and twenty years in some cases for the possesion of a joint is ridiculous IMHO.

coaledsweat wrote:Spraying someone elses crops with poison? That sounds like Agent Orange (dioxin, one of mans most deadly compounds) all over again. I can see the Peruvian, Bolivian, Columbian and Afgan kiddies with birth defects cleaning out whats left in the US Treasury in Federal Courts for the birth defects and deaths since its not really a war but an anti-crime operation. At least in a declared war you can remove some liability.

As said before its just like prohibition, all that did was turn a majority of Americans into criminals, I don't think too many gave up drinking alcohol. If drugs were legal and purchased at the pharmacy, you would collect taxes, know who, and have a record of who does and does not have a problem. The taxes would pay for treatment and rehabilitation etc. Most of the burglaries, muggings etc. disappear overnight. How many murders occurr in this country every year because of ILLEGAL drugs? The quality and saftey issues would be gone for the user too, how many people die because they really didn't know how good there latest bag was? The consumer would get a quality product at a price he could afford without having to steal or commit some other crimes. The crimminalization is the only reason the stuff costs so much in the first place, hence the crimminal activity to pay the price.

Heroin, cocaine and a lot of other crap like that was available at the turn of the century over the counter and there were very few addicts. Seems like half of the high is becuase its illegal.

It isn't really a war as I see it, more like an exercise in futility and a terrible waste of money and manpower. Paying to keep someone in prison for ten and twenty years in some cases for the possesion of a joint is ridiculous IMHO.

I can't disagree with a single one of your points. Problem is this country wont be ready to legalize drugs, prostitution or any of the other "morals" crimes for many, many years. As a private citizen now, I would love to see a day when law enforcement could stop going after "victimless" crime & spend all their time on real crimes like terrorism, murder for hire, etc. Having said that, I still feel pretty good about DEA's contribution to law enforcement as DEA attempts to deal with really bad guys & groups where drug peddling is usually only a small portion of their crime "repertoire."

69Drag wrote:Hey Devil5052, I got distracted by the tangents this subject took off on and I forgot to comment on your training experience story. That sounds very intense and fun at the same time. I wouldn't mind taking some more training sometime. Did you guys wear any hearing protection while doing that? Man, the sound of gun fire in a building would be deafening. I shot a groundhog inside a barn with a .357mag and no hearing protection. My ears rang for a couple hours.

The same group that gave me my ccw training also offers some more advanced levels of training. I'm friends with one of the instructors and he works at the gun shop I frequent. Also good friends the the gun shop owner and I get a little extra $$$ knocked off my purchaces. With the rising prices of ammo these days, any little bit helps.

John

We always wore sound deadening headphones & our usuall blue overalls. (Trying to remember if we wore the headphones during the Hogan's Alley part of training but I can't remember???) I do remember that most of our firearms traing was taught using "Wad Cutters" for ammunition but that late in our trainnig they introduced us to "Super-Vel" ammuniton which went off like a bomb & practicaly took your hand off! I have no idea how many more grains it was but our firearms instructer collected all of our, light framed, 38Specials & had to re-tighten them after we had fired the combat course using Super Vel. He initaily gave us 6 rounds to load....Three normal wad cutters & 3 Super Vel. We fired the 3 wad cutters first & then, when the first Super Vel went off it was quite a shock!! (our hands actually were bruised & hurt for a fdew days!You are right...Hogan's Alley was both intense & fun! (actualy more fun to look back on as you were always scared to death about failing the course, as you were doing it! (We did lose about 1/2 of the agent trainees that started it.))Another fun day was when they took us out to the Marine base at Quantico (now the academy's location) to fire the shotgun & submachine gun. They drove us in buses past numerous, beutifuly manicured outdoor FBI firing ranges but kept on going until we were in what looked like the garbage dump!! That was DEA's firing range!!! (DEA was & probably still is the little pimple on the butt of the FBI & Justice Dept!)We got to fire the S&W 9mm submachine gun, but they would only give us about 1/2 of a full magazine to play with!!! ( No kick to it at all....I think it was "blow-back" operated.....The lead instructor fired it first & to show us the lack of kick, he held the butt up against his face when firing it) We shot at ashcans, old car wrecks, tec. It was fun!

Side note: Back in the mid 1970's DEA's weapons doctrine was that a shotgun could only leave the office if accompanied by a senior field agent. (we took one any every raid) The S&W 9mm submachine gun could only leave the office if accompanied by an Asst. Regional Director or above. ( I never saw one used in the field... not once!....It was a different time in terms of violence)